sparse matrix

A sparse matrix is a matrix in which most of the elements are zero. By contrast, if most of the elements are nonzero, then the matrix is considered dense. The fraction of zero elements /non-zero elements in a matrix is called the sparsity/density.

sparse matrix::

When storing and manipulating sparse matrices on a computer, it is beneficial and often necessary to use specialized algorithms and data structures that take advantage of the sparse structure of the matrix. Operations using standard dense-matrix structures and algorithms are slow and inefficient when applied to large sparse matrices as processing and memory are wasted on the zeroes. Sparse data is by nature more easily compressed and thus require significantly less storage. Some very large sparse matrices are infeasible to manipulate using standard dense-matrix algorithms.